


The Driver

by Jellyflush



Category: Snowrunner
Genre: Big Salmon Peak, Industry, Landscape, Mother Nature - Freeform, Other, Pacific, Yukon - Freeform, description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29229717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellyflush/pseuds/Jellyflush
Summary: A little something I wrote about the game which has been on my mind for a while.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	The Driver

“Last time I was sober, man that felt bad!” No, the driver was not in that sort of mood as he reached over to change the station. There were only three though and one of them was a farmer stating the daily prices of farming produce for the entire day. The other was two hillbilly women bickering about politics.

Deciding that the radio was a no go, he took his foot off the gas so that he could reach down for his phone. Scrolling through his list of songs, he tapped on the first one which suited his mood more. Putting his phone back down on the passenger seat, he turned his attention back towards the muddy dirt track he was trucking through.

“Father they have written, of the point of no return” The sombre tones of Modern Talking came through the speakers of the driver’s old Pacific truck. It was a living, breathing thing. It hissed, hummed, barked, ticked and roared. He looked down the long hood of the P12, scanning for fallen trees and ditches which would catch his massive, 59-inch tyres.

It was bumpy, he was constantly being bounced up and down in his seat. After months, it had started to become painful and no matter how padded he made his seat, nothing would detract from the fact that it seemed to be directly attached to the trucks antiquated leaf spring suspension.

Shifting down a gear, a group of birds nesting in a nearby tree darted away as the car-sized engine of the truck roared and rumbled its tune. The Pacific truly was an archaic, monstrous beast from a time long past. A huge chunk of Canadian metal twice the height of an average 4x4 and thrice as long too. It was almost too ugly, too industrial to be seen driving through the beautiful Canadian wilderness of the Yukon. It seemed an afront to nature itself. It was true, the Pacific was part of a dying breed, emission and efficiency laws having stifled and killed most of its rumbling brethren.

Yet still it survived, a relic of the past soldiering through the streams, mud trails and bogs of the Yukon valley that the driver had been working in for the past few months. He had been contracted by Goldhorse mining to help redevelop and reactivate a gold mine up by the nearby Big Salmon Peak. Again, just like his truck, it seemed like an affront to the beautiful, rugged, mostly untouched nature in the valley. He also wondered if this time, the goldmine, and the surrounding infrastructure would stay? He did not know.

WEEE

The truck came to a stop before a river crossing. The driver depressed the clutch to engage the all-wheel-drive before continuing.

He had been following work crews around the valley, searching for and dismantling ruins of half build and abandoned structures, presumably started while the old goldmine was still in operation. It was eerie, there was the ghost of civilisation here. It was the frontier, that was for certain. Before he had arrived in the Yukon, he didn’t think the term still existed or was still applicable to anything. Clearly it was though as mother nature still wasn’t willing to give up her spoils of gold so easily.

Now past the dangerous river crossing, the driver came across a rare stretch of paved road which hadn’t either been swamped or destroyed by the elements. It allowed him to go faster that 10 mph which was a rarity. Getting anywhere in the valley was a painful, long process. Most paths were just that, muddy, bog ridden paths between towering trees which seemed to crowd around the truck like disdainful onlookers. It took hours to go even 40 miles down the road, and that wasn’t even factoring in the dangerous, cliffside ascent to the mine entrance itself perched up near Big Salmon Peak.

Cranking the heavy steering wheel left and right as the driver travelled down the winding road, he passed the recently opened mineral sorting facility, already belching out thick black smoke into the bitingly fresh air of the flooded valley. It was one of the only few standing structures in the place. There was no town for hundreds of miles, the nearest hospital even further. It was a very lonely place, even worse than Steel River Township down in Michigan where the driver had previously worked with a forwarding company. At least that place was a half horse town. That was secluded and lonely, but the Yukon was worse. He had been sleeping and living in his truck for the past month and he was looking forward to finishing his contract and finally heading back to civilisation. As beautiful and serene nature was on the frontier, the driver was looking forward to his creature comforts back in Toronto.

VWUSH

The driver was painfully bounced around in his seat as the front wheels of his truck mounted a temporary wooden bridge over another raging stream of snowmelt. Passing by a sleepy farm on his right, nestled into the mountainside, the driver turned a corner to see Bill, the owner of the gas station sitting by the road on a deckchair shooting the breeze. The man turned to wave at the driver as he passed, a smile on his face. The driver returned the gesture as he thundered past on his steel stallion. He would miss Bill the most. He held onto the mail that the driver wrote to his family back in Toronto. There was no internet at all and the phone was spotty at best so written mail was all he could do. Bill also helped the driver by printing out the pictures he snapped on his camera to attach to the weekly mail that the driver sent to his family. He hoped that they were doing well. He missed his wife and children greatly. He hadn’t seen them for months and his heart was starting to ache for them. He had vowed to do no more contract work for the rest of his life, no matter how lucrative the pay was. He just couldn’t stomach the constant gut wrenching feeling of not being there for his wife and children all the time.

His wife didn’t really understand why he did it either. That also didn’t help.

He glanced down at a digital clock taped to the dash. He was on schedule; despite the muddy hellhole he was ploughing through. His Pacific was something else, that was for sure. No matter how filthy, noisy and unrefined it was, it was the perfect vehicle to tame the harsh beauty of the Yukon.

Before him, Big Salmon Peak loomed out of the early morning fog, its virgin white snow and black, craggy peaks gleaming in the morning sun. It would not stay that way for long. The gears of industry waited for no one, not even mother nature. Soon, that glistening white snow would be stained brown and black by the driver’s monstrous machine.

The driver would miss his massive brute of a machine. It had been family to him over the last month. There was something so appealing, so alluring about it, something so at odds with its surroundings. That was it, it was anathema to the natural world in all of its industrial might. It was just as alive as the trees and streams and mountains of the Yukon. A personality all of its own. He would have to say a goodbye to it at the end of the day though, for the driver was hauling the last delivery of his contract up to the gold mine before finally, after many months, he would be able to return to civilisation.

Again, his wife would probably not understand, but he had brought his Pacific, and was going to have it shipped back to his home in Toronto. It meant as much to him as his wife and kids. He did not care if it sat in his backyard, under a tarpaulin, slowly rusting away, never to be driven again as nature slowly reclaimed it. The driver did not care, he just wanted it to be near him.

Stopping before the treacherous, icy, snow covered ascent up the mountainside, he depressed the clutch to shift his truck into low range for what would probably be the last time. That made him strangely sad. There were two things he would miss about the Yukon, that was for sure. One, would be the scenery, the painfully beautiful landscapes that mother nature had crafted. Two, his truck. He would lose one, and keep the other. A balanced trade… good enough for the driver.


End file.
